New Forest or the shingle of Southsea. A depleted bank account
had caused me to postpone my holiday, and as to my companion,
neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest
attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very center of five
millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running
through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of
unsolved crime. Appreciation of nature found no place among his
many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from
the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the
country.

Finding that Holmes was too absorbed for conversation I had
tossed side the barren paper, and leaning back in my chair I fell
into a brown study. Suddenly my companion's voice broke in upon
my thoughts:

"You are right, Watson," said he. "It does seem a most
preposterous way of settling a dispute."

"Most preposterous!" I exclaimed, and then suddenly realizing how
he had echoed the inmost thought of my soul, I sat up in my chair
and stared at him in blank amazement.

"What is this, Holmes?" I cried. "This is beyond anything which
I could have imagined."

He laughed heartily at my perplexity.

"You remember," said he, "that some little time ago when I read
you the passage in one of Poe's sketches in which a close